The tories are coming closer and closer to becoming ukip, who in turn have completely lost themselves; there is still no sign of a coherent plan on Brexit; and our opposition is still non existent. Looking good for the UK.

Brullnux wrote:The tories are coming closer and closer to becoming ukip, who in turn have completely lost themselves; there is still no sign of a coherent plan on Brexit; and our opposition is still non existent. Looking good for the UK.

Oh, and boris has turned all of Europe even further against the UK

If the far right parties do end up winning in Austria, France and the Netherlands, perhaps they'll find partners in the UK?

Great news on the British front too: May has elaborated from Brexit means Brexit and we know now that Brexit means Brexit means we are getting a Red, White and Blue Brexit, but it is beggar's belief why we are trying to get the French involved in this. We need to ask the serious questions here though, to gather more about the Brexit plan. What shade red, white and blue? Because aqua blue and navy blue are very different, we need more information.

So the Red Cross has declared an emergency in British hospitals.Some of them are so overwelmed and understaffed - especially around the Christmas holidays - that people die from having to wait too long for treatment.

Jagartrott wrote:So the Red Cross has declared an emergency in British hospitals.Some of them are so overwelmed and understaffed - especially around the Christmas holidays - that people die from having to wait too long for treatment.

The Conservatives must be so proud.

It isn't an emergency. Theresa May said so. She never lies.

Over Christmas, over 6000 households, including 3000 families, were housedin B&B's. There they have no privacy at all, and in many have to share even a toilet. 1300 of them have stayed there for over 6 weeks, the theoretical limit that they are allowed to stay there before they are moved to better accommodation. An increase of 1200 in five years. It's a time of austerity, the tories have claimed for the last 6 years, so we have to make cutbacks and save money. This administration, while feigning to be different, is the same. Interestingly, it costed more to keep this level of homelessness up for 5 years (£3.5 billion) than the affordable housing program of 2011-2015 (£1.8 billion). So what can we deduce from this? The Tories just don't care.

Another great statistic refers to the postal offices strikes. The strikers caused the closure of an estimated 50 offices, and "held the people in contempt" according the esteemed authoritarian Theresa May. The cause for these strikes was a government plan to close 76 offices. This, of course, is not holding the people in contempt.

The hypocrisy of this government is worse than most its predecessors, but nobody properly holds it to account. Or at least, it isn't reported if they do. My problem is that Corbyn is too weak, not emotive or passionate enough to really engage the nation and focus them on these hypocrisies.

Brexit will fix it.Except of course that more and more hospital personnel, uncluding doctors and surgeons, has to be imported from abroad as British students no longer see it as an attractive profession (also because of the huge student loans required). I fear for Britain that the Brexit will require so much energy and focus, that other issues just get snowed under.

Jagartrott wrote:Summary:"We want to have our cake and eat it. Or else..."

At least we know a bit more as to what is going on. We know that the UK will not be in the single market, and May has admitted that we can't be in the single market and have restrictions on immigration.

The new deal could include the freedom for the City of London to provide financial services across national borders, since it “makes no sense to start again from scratch”.

Good luck with getting that past Frankfurt. This is their chance.

May was also unclear with the Customs Union, wanting both tarriff-free access to the EU and ability to negotiate crappy trade deals with other nations. It will probably have to come down to one or the other; politically speaking, the latter is more preferable to the Leave voters, but economically speaking the former is more important.

May stressed Parliament (MPs and Peers) will be allowed to vote on the deal, although the appeal at the time of writing has not yet been withdrawn. Interestingly, May refused the idea of an interim, transitional deal as it was "Political purgatory". So if the UK is offered a "bad deal", May will refuse and go back to WTO rules, and the UK will become a tax haven. I am not an expert on economics, micro or macro, but I am pretty sure most tax havens have corporate tax rates of 0-12.5% (all of the small island ones are at 0%, and Ireland is at 12.5%, and there are many others which aren't reknowned in between, like Bulgaria and Montenegro - Luxembourg is almost 30% so I imagine there are some fairly open loopholes there). Being at 20% right now, that represents a decrease of over 40% before we are as competitive as our next door neighbours, and even down to 15% is a decrease of a quarter. That means to make up the deficit created we need to find 1/3 more businesses housed in the UK. I am not at all sure that a move to become a tax haven would in any way benefit the UK, as has there even been a tax haven as big as 65 million people? All are less than 15, most less than 1 million. Either that or we can create really lax regulations on everything.

Britain will never get a goldilocks deal. The EU will make sure that other countries thinking of leaving will not be persuaded. That means they won't be allowing Britain to have the benefits without the costs. The EU is also a *much* stronger economic block, so for May to make (not-so-)veiled threats is... optimistic.

Jagartrott wrote:Britain will never get a goldilocks deal. The EU will make sure that other countries thinking of leaving will not be persuaded. That means they won't be allowing Britain to have the benefits without the costs. The EU is also a *much* stronger economic block, so for May to make (not-so-)veiled threats is... optimistic.

My thoughts too. May speaks of how a bad deal would be 'self harm for the EU' (no irony there at all) but it would be much more serious self harm to allow the UK what they want. Le Pen has already distanced herself from leaving the EU immediately, and I suspect the EU will want to keep it going in that direction.

Apparently, there was a misfired Trident missile during a test, a few weeks before the vote on renewing it and, surprise surprise, No 10 and the MoD tried to cover it up and hide it. They succeeded, and the renewal passed by 355 votes.

However, now it has come out and some people think there may be something slightly corrupt and misleading in keeping this a secret. Theresa May, in a hilarious interview with Marr, refused to answer whether she knew about this (the vote was only a few days into her premiership) four times, talking over the top of Marr with a prepared speech written by her PR people consisting mainly of random buzzwords. A transparent and honest PM if I ever saw one.

surprised no one commented on the big news today, that is, that brexit requires a UK parliament approval to become a brexit according to the highest judicial body in the uk land.

i don't really know what to think...otoh, the plebiscite being the balance democratic opinion of the nation has to be respected automatically and w/o the pre-conditions. on the other, the highest court has to have a say about what a COMPLETE democratic process including all its stages should be and they said, 'debate more, even block if needs be'

to me it looks like another clusterfork rather than a genuine democratic process...

and if anyone is using the clusterfork to achieve the goals opposite of the mass vote, it points, imo, to the dysfunctional contemporary western democracy.

one of the oldest, unique and quite functional not all that long ago.

DJPbaltimore:'John Kerry is an honorable person and would not call out the Russians if there was not evidence', 'the 2 of you are russia stooges'in foreign policy there are no eternal friendships or eternal enemies, only eternal interests

python wrote:surprised no one commented on the big news today, that is, that brexit requires a UK parliament approval to become a brexit according to the highest judicial body in the uk land.

i don't really know what to think...otoh, the plebiscite being the balance democratic opinion of the nation has to be respected automatically and w/o the pre-conditions. on the other, the highest court has to have a say about what a COMPLETE democratic process including all its stages should be and they said, 'debate more, even block if needs be'

to me it looks like another clusterfork rather than a genuine democratic process...

and if anyone is using the clusterfork to achieve the goals opposite of the mass vote, it points, imo, to the dysfunctional contemporary western democracy.

one of the oldest, unique and quite functional not all that long ago.

It wasn't that important to me personally because it was very much expected and Theresa May herself had said last week that parliament would vote on it.

The referendum was advisory, and not to government but to parliament. In the U.K., Downing Street doesn't have much executive power, as it's a paliamentary democracy, so all the power is in Parliament. It is not possible, as we have just found out, to pass this without parliamentary approval. This is completely right, and in my opinion, undiscussable. How the MPs vote is another matter, but I think the right way to do this would be to represent the feelings of your own constituency, as constitutionally that is how the U.K. works (people elected to represent and vote in the interests and on behalf of an area) and Leave would still win. Nobody should be particularly upset by this, and at least in my mind make sense. Parliament will vote for it, no doubt. They may not approve May's deal, but that's for the future.